Obama Administration Cuts Back Size of Nuclear Arsenal

With just days left in his presidency, Barack Obama has announced major cuts to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. The cuts, which are not part of any arms control agreement still leave Washington with an impressive arsenal of more than four thousand nuclear warheads.

Speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace yesterday, Vice President Joe Biden announced the U.S. has reduced its stockpile of nuclear weapons by 553 weapons, to a new total of 4,018. The cuts began in September 2015.

The current, post-cut U.S. stockpile of 4,018 nuclear weapons represents both deployed and nondeployed weapons on intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, and nuclear gravity bombs. It's important to note that this represents individual warheads or bombs and not long-range missiles, bombers, and other delivery systems. Each missile or bomber is capable of carrying multiple warheads or bombs.

A B-52H bomber lands at Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. June 2016. U.S. Air Force photo by Airman 1st Class Alexa Ann Henderson.

Deployed weapons include nuclear warheads on missiles on submarines at sea, bombers on alert, and nuclear missiles sitting in silos in Wyoming, North Dakota, and Montana. Nondeployed warheads are sitting in storage, either waiting to go on deployment, awaiting dismantling, or stored in case the U.S. needs to suddenly beef up its arsenal.

Currently, the U.S. has a total of 681 land-based Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missiles, Trident II D-5 submarine-launched missiles, and B-52 and B-2 strategic bombers deployed. Between them, these platforms pack a total of 1,367 warheads and bombs. Most U.S. nuclear missiles are equipped with MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles—individual warheads that can strike different targets) and bombers carry more than one Air Launched Cruise Missile or nuclear gravity bomb.

Obama is not the first U.S. President to cut the nuclear stockpile. In fact, as the Federation of American Scientists points out, all presidents since Lyndon Johnson have made cuts, when the stockpile numbered more than 30,000 weapons. Presidents George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush have made the deepest by far.

By comparison, the Obama administration's 1,255 weapon cut is fairly modest. Still, as Hans Kristensen at the Federation of American scientists has pointed out, that's more weapons than "Britain, China, France, India, Israel, North Korea, and Pakistan combined."

It's not clear what weapons were cut and where, but it's safe to say that with tensions with Russia running as they are, the number of deployed weapons has not fallen. The cuts almost certainly came from nondeployed weapons. The U.S. (Russia too) is required to periodically announce the number of deployed weapons as part of the New START—or as Trump calls it, "The Startup"—treaty. The number of deployed U.S. weapons has not fallen enough to account for the cuts so the cuts must have been made to weapons in storage.

The New START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) allows for both the U.S. and Russia to have a maximum 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads equipping no more than 700 deployed ICBMs, submarine launched missiles, and bombers. Both sides can have an additional 100 more nondeployed ICBMs, submarine launched missiles and bombers that can rotate in and out of the deployed force to fill in for weapons down for maintenance.

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